Thursday, the DC Office of Planning filed its recommendations to the Zoning Commission regarding Georgetown University's 2010 Campus Plan. The report is an unrealistic document that essentially insists on Georgetown shrinking its undergraduate enrollment by requiring that the university provide on-campus housing for 100 percent of undergraduates by fall of 2016. If the university does not meet this standard, which also includes an intermediate step of housing 90 percent of undergraduates on campus by fall of 2015, Georgetown must cut its undergraduate enrollment.
Furthermore, the report adheres to an inaccurate definition on on-campus, which is either behind the 37th Street front gates or otherwise outside of the 20007 zip code. GU owns a substantial amount of property outside of the front gates, and the definition of "campus" includes all of that property, which includes several classroom buildings. In fact, Georgetown had proposed to build a small apartment complex on this property, but the neighbors killed the project, even when the university modified the plan so that it would have housed only graduate students. As a later concession, Georgetown agreed to instead add 250 beds by 2014 outside of the 20007 zip code.
To be fair, I can empathize with these residents to a certain extent. I definitely lost some sleep trying to cope with undergraduate noise while living on campus. However, the university has been present in the vaunted 20007 zip code for quite some time. The university, founded in 1789, has had a historical presence in Georgetown long before the neighborhood was so attractive with high property values. Since fewer students live off campus than in the 1970s and 1980s (when these NIMBYs were in college), I find it hard to believe that the problem has worsened in recent years. According to the report, the neighborhood has reached "the tipping point of diminished residential character."
One quote from the report in particular stuck out to me: "The number of students living within a community has an adverse impact due to the transient nature of students, their orientation to the university and university events, their involvement and socialization with other students and likelihood that they are not living year round within the community versus a full-time permanent resident who have chosen a community as their home."
First of all, DC is by nature a place filled with transient individuals. People from all over the country and even the world are drawn to our nation's capital, and there is a constant flow of people in and out of the DC area.
Second of all, I am deeply offended that "orientation to the university" in and of itself has an adverse impact on the community. How is a connection to Georgetown University inherently bad? The vast majority of Georgetown residents attended college, and I hope that for their sake they were part of an engaging university community, rather than feeling like outsiders in the neighborhood who should walk to class with their heads down, seen and not heard. If the report had just stuck with "socialization with other students" and elaborated on the propensity of such socialization to include loud, disruptive evening events, I wouldn't have been able to take such offense. However, the insinuation that the mere affiliation with the university adversely affects the neighborhood effectively labels all the student, faculty members, and staff as agents of evil. Not all students, I would like to think myself included, contributed to a noisy, unpleasant atmosphere.
Furthermore, try replacing "students" with "African Americans," "gays," or "Roman Catholics." I don't think that the Office of Planning would possibly recommend that the presence of members of such groups be eliminated due to some adverse impact on the neighborhood.
The final point that rankles me is that somehow students are less of citizens because they tend not to live in the community year round. Many Georgetown students do indeed spend at least one of their summers in DC, taking advantage of the number of internships. Also, do none of the owners of multimillion dollar Georgetown townhouses spend their summers outside of 20007 at vacation homes or in the south of France? Finally, Georgetown students are continually discriminated against when they try to fully participate in Georgetown civic life. For example, I read that during the April 26 special election, Georgetown students who had previously registered to vote in DC but were not on the rolls were turned away from the polls, instead of being permitted to cast a provisional ballot, as is their right.
The report contains at least one obvious falsehood: "However, many universities of competitive standard to Georgetown house 100% of their students on campus. Harvard, MIT and Princeton are among other universities that require all of their undergraduate students to live on campus."
In fact, not one of those three universities require all of its students to live on campus or houses all of its undergraduates to live on campus. MIT houses less undergraduates on campus than Georgetown (70 percent vs. 76 percent). Even Harvard or Princeton, with their rich residential college traditions, house less than 100 percent of their undergraduates on campus (Princeton is 97 percent).
However, bringing up Harvard and Princeton raises an interesting point: if on-campus housing is more attractive, more students will likely choose to live there. I spent my three years at Georgetown living on campus (I studied abroad in Madrid for a full year). My freshman and sophomore years were spent in meager double occupancy dorm rooms, and I was required to get a meal plan at the awful dining hall. I spent my senior year in a four-person apartment, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I appreciated the convenience of living on campus, since I was close to my classes and didn't have to deal with a landlord or paying for utilities. However, I did enjoy that I was in an apartment, with more space and, most importantly, a kitchen to prepare my own meals.
Georgetown proposed to build another such complex, but the neighbors fought it tooth and nail because it was outside of the front gates. Jennifer Altemus, a 1988 graduate of Georgetown College and the ringleader of the anti-campus plan brigade, called on Georgetown to build more housing inside of the gates, speaking warmly of her time living in Nevils. Nevils, of course, is outside of the front gates. The neighbors' number one choice of a location for new on-campus housing is on top of the dining hall. Such a structure would likely consist of dorms, which upper class students do not want to live in, and would likely be prohibitively expensive given that it would be on top of an existing structure.
While the OP states that Georgetown's plan to add 250 beds is a plan in the right direction, it is not enough: "However, the applicant only proposes to move 250 students onto campus, out of approximately1,600 undergraduates living off campus. This would still leave over 1300 undergraduate students in off-campus housing. Similar to what other universities have undertaken, housing one hundred percent of the undergraduate students on campus has been found to be the most effective means of controlling student behavior."
I'm not sure which universities, other than the military academies, have housed one hundred percent of undergraduates not only on campus but inside an arcane definition of campus boundaries to lessen noise for neighbors. Furthermore, Georgetown students are free to walk the streets of Georgetown. They will still have to pass through the 20007 zip code to spend their money at the restaurants and shops located on Wisconsin and M Streets.
If the neighbors want absolute peace and quiet, I think that they should consider moving to the suburbs. Instead, their end game seems to be for Georgetown to pack up and move to Virginia, leaving the campus as open green space (that only 20007 residents could use, of course). Never mind that Georgetown University is the city's largest nongovernmental employer.
Neighbors have insisted throughout the entire debate that they are not anti-student. However, this claim seems patently false. The Office of Planning report starts out by saying how important universities are to DC intellectual and cultural life as well as for the economy and employment. Except for those pesky students!
I'm not trying to say that Georgetown shouldn't try to build more on-campus housing. However, the requests laid out in this report are extremely unrealistic. I am unsure of how exactly Georgetown is going to add 250 beds by 2014, other than perhaps by converting the conference center hotel to student housing. We have very little space inside the gates, but we have even less money. Compared to our so-called "peer institutions" (a huge stretch!), we have a tiny endowment. We are currently building a sorely-needed science center that will not even be big enough for all of the professors to have offices there, let alone try to hire more researchers to try to become an actual world-class research university. Aside from that, the biggest need is for more student space. The library, apart from being an eyesore with shoddy wireless and few electrical outlets, does not have anywhere close to enough space for students to study.
I'm just not sure where or with what money Georgetown could build more student housing by 2016. Therefore, the report ultimately seems to be underhandedly seeking to shrink undergraduate enrollment. A decrease in enrollment would likely prompt the university to lay off faculty and staff, which I'm sure would be a boon for the local economy.
I haven't even addressed whether or not it is good for Georgetown to require all of its undergraduates to live on campus and whether it would affect the caliber of student attracted to Georgetown and thus the worth of that already overpriced piece of sheepskin my parents bought me last year. But I think pointing out the anti-student and unrealistic demands made by the neighbors and now the Office of Planning is more than enough for a good Saturday rant.
I've been asking myself whether my views are too heavily impacted by my recent status as a Georgetown student. After all, walking around my senior year, I saw the neighborhood filled with anti-campus plans lawn signs. However, I don't think that's the case. Frankly, I have a lot of problems with the Georgetown administration and don't consider myself connected to the university in any way. Even if that were the case, it shouldn't matter. I am a DC taxpayer and was counted here in the 2010 Census, which saw an increase in DC population for the first time in decades. In fact, I spent 50 weeks of 2010 residing in the District. See, that's the thing about Georgetown students: many of them like the DC location and opt to stay, especially because of the number of professional opportunities for recent graduates.
Let's just say that the Zoning Commission will be hearing from this DC taxpayer.
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